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By Yereth RosenREUTERS • Sunday September 1, 2013 9:10 AM

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An Alaskan volcano that has been intermittently oozing lava and releasing
small bursts of ash and steam since June erupted with new ferocity on Friday, sending clouds of ash
more than 3 miles high, scientists said.

The latest eruptions from the 8,225-foot Veniaminof volcano on the Alaska Peninsula, nearly 500
miles southwest of Anchorage, marked some of the strongest unrest detected at the site this summer
and might intensify, the Alaska Volcano Observatory warned.

But the eruptions were not thought to be linked to a large, magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck
on Friday in waters off the remote Alaskan island of Adak, nearly 800 miles southwest of Veniaminof
in the Aleutians chain, said John Power, the observatory’s scientist in charge.

“The plate tectonics are the same, but there’s no direct relationship between the volcano and
the earthquake,” he said.

The quake was felt strongly on Adak, a former Navy station now home to a commercial fishing and
maritime service center, the city manager said. Multiple aftershocks followed.

Large quakes and volcanic eruptions are fairly common in southwestern Alaska and the Aleutian
Islands, which lie in one of the most seismically active parts of the United States.